It took nine attempts before the box finally answered, "Verbal command accepted. Visual command accepted. Retina scan accepted. Authorization complete. Welcome, approved visitor."
He was in. The molly supporting the tunnel, and via it the box, was now amenable to access, though that did not mean everything within had suddenly become an open book. Tentatively, he called forth records and contents. As they appeared in the tunnel before him, shifting and steadying in response to his orders, he scanned them with a policeman's eye, wishing he had the time to make detailed recordings. Further analysis of The Mock's illicit little empire would have to await the attention of the NFP's forensic accountants. Right now, he was only interested in information relating to the death of Surtsey Mockerkin and the concurrent attempts to abduct her daughter.
Unable to isolate anything directly relevant, he was eventually compelled to resort to a more straightforward variety of oral interrogation.
"Surtsey Mockerkin is dead," he informed the box. "Were you aware of that fact?"
"I have already logged that information," the molly told him, speaking from the escher depths of the tunnel. Cold and emotionless as a stony plain in central Greenland, it added, "That particular gram has been terminated."
Cardenas found that he wanted to be rid of the chameleon and its claustrophobic, form-fitting, sensor-impregnated resilience as quickly as possible. It limited his vision and left him feeling edgy and uncomfortable. "What about the efforts to repossess Katla Mockerkin?"
"That operation is ongoing. As per relevant instructions, if the individual in question cannot be recovered, she is to be terminated, to prevent the possible dissemination of restricted internal data. The appropriate apposite instructions have been disseminated."
A chill ran down Cardenas's back. What a wonderful person was The Mock. The more he learned about the dead man, the more he came to understand how someone like Surtsey Mockerkin would risk death just to get away from him. Unfortunately for her, it had turned out to be a bad risk.
If the lepero couldn't get his daughter back, he was going to have her killed, to keep the information stored in her mind out of the hands of competitors and the authorities. Swell way for a man to treat his own daughter. Like a storage chip. A disposable storage chip. The Inspector pondered a response. "I wish to terminate that undertaking, effective immediately."
"The gram in question can only be canceled upon receipt of a specific command paradigm compiled by Mr. Cleator Mockerkin."
Dead end. He tried an oblique approach. "I will provide it in a moment. Meanwhile, please take the necessary preliminary steps to terminate the recovery effort."
The box was adamant—albeit in the polite, detached AI manner of its kind. "The gram in question can only be canceled upon receipt of a specific command paradigm compiled by Mr. Cleator Mockerkin."
He was stuck. If he used vorec and spinner to instigate a penetration probe, he was likely to trigger the hidden and probably armored mollysphere's built-in defensive mechanisms. He did not know what those might be, but given the character of the man in whose chair he was currently sitting, they were likely to be unpleasant. If he continued to press the demand verbally without providing the called-for paradigm, a hitech box like this one was likely to grow suspicious and either cut off his access cold or request some additional form of identification. When he failed to provide it, other alarms might be raised, other defense devices besides the alcove lasers activated.
He could vape the incog he had adopted, call in, and have the power to the box shut down, or for that matter, secure an order for shutdown or even demolition of the entire West Padre #3 industrial complex. That was what police insurance was for. But a suitably advanced box designed to juggle secure national, much less international, information and data would be in constant touch with several, perhaps dozens of backup mollys scattered all over the planet. If he had this one destroyed, the rest of the system might continue to function unobserved and undetected for an indeterminate length of time. That would include continuing to process the gram demanding Katla Mockerkin's capture or destruction.
On the other hand, any command accepted here would promulgate instantly throughout the entire network—including one to terminate that order. In addition to which, if he called in a demolition team, all the rest of the valuable information currently residing on the box, threads that could lead to the arrest and prosecution of dozens, maybe hundreds of wanted individuals and enterprises, would be lost. Now, more than ever, he had to proceed with discretion.
There was one more thing he could try. It might set off a flurry of unwelcome responses, but he was determined to chance it. If it worked, at worst it might shut down the entire system without providing a response to his request, but might do so without damaging any permanent files. Those were, and had to remain, secondary to securing the health and safety of a certain twelve-year-old girl waiting back in Nogales. Grim-faced behind the chameleon, he once again addressed the machine.
"Cleator Mockerkin is dead. Therefore all ongoing grams requiring his input should immediately be suspended."
He waited breathlessly, uncertain of what to expect. Depending on their level of AI sophistication, different mollys responded in different ways to directives that offered the prospect of internal conflict. He expected one this advanced to ignore him, or to reject the input as unprocessable, or possibly to demand elaboration.
He did not expect it to say, without wavering or hesitation, "I know. Mr. Cleator Mockerkin was struck and killed by an out-of-control bus going north on Houston Street, outside the Brazos Mall, in the inside lane, temperature thirty-eight degrees Celsius, relative humidity sixty-four percent, at three fifty-four P.M. on the afternoon of September seventeenth."
Cardenas swallowed. "If the gram relating to the recovery or... termination ... of Katla Mockerkin can only be canceled by a command paradigm compiled by Cleator Mockerkin, and Cleator Mockerkin has been dead for going on more than three months, then how is the gram to be canceled?"
"Under the scenario you describe, it cannot be canceled." The box exuded a chilling assurance that was maddening. "However, the gram will lapse when its parameters have been fulfilled."
"But there's no one left who'd want it fulfilled!" Easy, Cardenas told himself. Calm, collected, composed. Be like the box. Be a molly. Spin, but not off your axis. "The individual who entered the original gram, Cleator Mockerkin, is deceased. Therefore there is no one left to see the gram fulfilled."
"There is," the box replied, with utmost seriousness.
Cardenas sat back in the chair as if he had been slapped, and gaped at the tunnel that glowed with restricted lists and stats and images. There was a face somewhere back there, and it was not the face of a person. Impartial, unsympathetic, unmoved, and efficient, it was interested in only one thing: carrying out its programming. Scattered among the already unfathomable labyrinth of information that bound the world together, it could not be effectively neutralized except from this central source, and then only by expert operatives with ample time to ferret out its secrets and avoid the traps that must lie buried within.
Cardenas would see to it that they were put on the job as soon as it was safe to do so. But first he had to secure Katla Mockerkin's safety. If specialists were set on The Mock's box, that might be enough to cause it to shut down this main terminal in alarm and automatically decentralize its operations. The effect would be the same as blowing the place up. Conversely, if it remained in operation despite the probing, there was no guarantee even the most skilled specialists would be able to get into the guts of the main molly in time to save Katla Mockerkin.
In the absence of Cleator Mockerkin, and the instructions only that one now-unreachable man could provide, The Mock's box was determined to carry to fruition every extant gram that had been written to its widely scattered but tightly interlinked mollys. Mockerkin had been dead for months. It was the box that continued to issue orders to underlings to recover or kill Katla Mockerkin. It
was the box that continued to run The Mock's far-flung businesses and dealings, no doubt in the face of Mockerkin's less than sophisticated subordinates. After all, as the old custodian had pointed out, nobody cared who was doing the paying as long as they continued to get paid. And as he had suggested, the process was indeed automated. To a degree no one could have imagined.
Ruthless kidnappers and mataros with unimaginative one-track minds could be paid in exactly the same efficient, wordless, depersonalized fashion as a janitor, Cardenas realized.
It was the box, he saw with sudden clarity, that was responsible for the death of Surtsey Mockerkin. Gruesome postmortem revenge for her deceased husband. Even in death, he was a murdering feleon.
The local molly sitting somewhere behind the wall and generating the access tunnel could not be destroyed, or the connection to The Mock's wider box would be lost, along with any chance of getting the system to stand down the order to capture or kill Katla Mockerkin. When the amiable Yogesh Chanay had mused openly about imagining that the subsurface operation he had never visited must be largely automated, the innocent warehouse supervisor could have had no idea how appropriate his vision would turn out to be.
The only way to ensure Katla Mockerkin's safety in the future was to neutralize the gram containing the order for her abduction or murder. And the only person who could do that was dead. The only person.
Unless...
The box had not said that Cleator Mockerkin had to personally input the requisite command paradigm to terminate the relevant gram. What it had said was that "the gram in question can only be canceled upon receipt of a specific command paradigm compiled by Mr. Cleator Mockerkin." There was, just possibly, one other person who might be familiar with the requisite paradigm, and therefore able to input it.
"Close," Cardenas snapped brusquely. The tunnel obediently, and without comment, went dark. Reaching up and back, he gratefully peeled the chameleon off his head, ran a hand through his hair and fluffed it out as he breathed deeply of air he no longer had to sip through a permeable membrane. Shaking out the mask to dry it, he refolded it and slipped it back into the empty storage pocket on his belt. Rising, he wrapped the service belt around his waist and secured it.
For the second time that morning he hunched down behind the borrowed mirror as he inched his way back through the entry alcove. Once safely clear of the lethal antechamber and back in the outer office, he set the mirror aside and stretched. Not wishing to upset the kindly, helpful old custodian, he fully intended to affix the mirror back in place, using one of the industrial-strength adhesives that were included among the many odds and ends in his belt.
Unfortunately, one of the belt's alarms chose that moment to start beeping. Loudly. Either he had finally done something to arouse the suspicions of whatever automated security system monitored the room, or he had manually tripped some concealed defense mechanism.
He saw no indication of the gas, nor smelled it, but the sensors built into the belt did. Anyone caught in the room without such protection would doubtless crumple to the floor without ever knowing what had hit them, to awaken later. Or never. Leaving the mirror where he'd set it down and placing one palm over his mouth and nose, he ran for the exit as fast as he could. Only when he had scrambled back up the entryway ramp and out through the storage closet into the bathroom beyond did the beeping subside.
Ordinarily, he would have taken the time to return the camouflaged doorway to its original state. But with The Mock dead, he saw no reason to hide the fact that someone had accessed the hub. That much he could leave to the custodian. Right now his only interest lay in outpacing any trailing gas. Hurrying from the bathroom, he didn't slow down even though the sensor on his belt had gone silent.
The portals to the other two outer rooms he had explored when he had initially arrived remained closed, just as he had left them. There was no sign of the old janitor. As Cardenas exited the bathroom, that door slammed shut behind him. No matter. He'd seen all he had come to see, and learned all he could. All that remained was to get back to his hotel room, pack up the few personal items he had brought with him, and catch the next flight back to Nogales.
As before, the elevator at the end of the narrow hallway did not respond to his touch. Anticipating as much, he did not linger over it, and prepared to return to the surface the way he had come, via the nearby stairwell. He grabbed the handle and pulled. When it failed to give, he tried again. Repeated attempts to unlock the barrier using the sesame proved equally fruitless. Frowning, he returned the device to its holding pouch, stepped back, gripped the handle with both hands, put one foot up against the wall alongside the door, and pulled with all his strength. Nothing. Letting go of the handle and taking a step back, he began high-kicking in the vicinity of the lockseal. The sound of his foot slamming against the metal barrier echoed down the corridor. As for the door, it didn't budge. Exhausted, he splashed backward and wondered what he was doing wrong.
Splashed?
He had inadvertently triggered another defensive mechanism.
Looking down, he saw that water was rising rapidly around his shoes. It was over his ankles and climbing toward his knees by the time he reached the doors at the opposite end of the corridor. All three were, unsurprisingly, locked, sealed, and inviolable. The atypical slamming behind him of the bathroom door that led to the concealed workplace now assumed an ominous significance. The stink of the intracoastal waterway, a pungent mix of salt water, fuel oil from older vessels, and commercial runoff from West Padre #3 & 4, began to permeate the available air.
Sloshing back to the elevator and stairwell, he started to reach for the door handle one more time, but stopped. Removing the compact police cutter from its belt pouch, he made a hasty examination of the metal barrier. The handle was embedded in an armored lockplate. Struggling against the water as he moved to his left, he activated the cutter and started in on the middle of three hinges. The alloy was tough, and it took the cutter longer than Cardenas would have liked to slice all the way through.
By the time he began on the bottom hinge, the water was up to his chest and rising faster than ever. Even as he worked frantically, manipulating the cutter while wishing it was a more powerful commercial model, he found himself admiring the straightforwardness of the trap. Filling the access corridor with seawater was not only a way of creating a significant barrier against intruders from the surface, it was also a means of dealing very efficiently with anyone who had already gained unauthorized access and was subsequently trying to leave. While the flooding corridor did its work, staff could relax in their self-contained, watertight offices and continue their work unhindered.
Now only the topmost hinge remained in place, holding the door to the metal jamb. As he waited anxiously for the cutter to cleave the metal, he wondered how many guests who had offended The Mock had ultimately been floated out of his presence instead of walking away under their own power. Certainly when The Mock was in residence, visitors had been searched prior to being admitted. Any weapons, anything like a cutter that might enable them to make an escape, had surely been confiscated prior to admittance.
The water was up to his chin. Designed to function in any environment and manufactured to meet tough NFP specifications, the cutter continued to slice at the stubborn remaining hinge. Seawater swirled around him. He half expected to see smelt or sardines finning past. Three times, he had to fill his lungs and work underwater. The last time, there was barely enough of an air pocket between rising sea and impermeable ceiling in which to snatch a breath.
Ducking back down once more, he placed the cutter over the hinge, working from the light of its glow. When the beam finally severed the last of the implanted bolt, he switched it off, stuffed it in a pocket, and began kicking as hard as he could at the middle hinge where it was attached to the door. The surrounding water slowed and weakened his kicks. But with all three hinges cut through, the door began to give. Sensing weakness, and a potential outlet, the weight of the water surro
unding him added its own pressure to the effort.
For a terrible moment, he thought the door was going to stay jammed in place despite his best efforts to free himself. A lifelong resident of the desert Southwest, he did not particularly like the ocean. Of all the possible deaths he had envisioned for himself in the course of nearly thirty years with the Department, of all the near misses he had experienced working the mean streets of the Strip, the last thing he would have imagined was drowning in the course of doing his duty.
The pressure of the rising water proved irresistible. With it supplementing a hard kick from his right foot, the barrier finally gave way. Handle and lock remained tightly fastened, but the door bent inward off its severed hinges far enough to admit a single human body. Almost out of air as he struggled through the gap, propelled by the escaping water, Cardenas found himself giving murky thanks for his modest stature. Hyaki could never have made it through.
He banged his head on a railing when the roaring water threw him hard against the stairs on the other side of the lower landing. Dazed by the impact, sucking in huge, reinvigorating lungfuls of fresh air, he paused to collect himself on the third step. With water gushing out of the corridor behind him, he struggled to his feet. He stumbled up the stairwell, using the railing for support and to pull himself upward.